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Prevent. Protect. Perform.

Georgia's Director of Sports Nutrition Jen Ketterly was recently awarded the Excellence/Perseverance
Award from the Collegiate & Professional Sports Dietician Association
(CPSDA) at the group's annual convention earlier this month. The award is given
annually in recognition of "immeasurable enthusiasm and extraordinary
dedication" to the profession and the organization. In her role as the head of
the two-year-old sports nutrition department within the UGA Athletic
Association, Ketterly is responsible for managing nutrition education for
student-athletes, writing individual nutrition plans, monitoring body
composition, evaluating nutritional supplements, and planning pre-game and
travel meals for the teams. In addition, she oversees nutrition care for football,
men's and women's basketball, volleyball, and women's golf.

Just after Ketterly's
award was announced, UGA Director of Athletics Greg McGarity was given the
CPSDA's Tom Osborne Award for Commitment to Nutrition, as he was instrumental
in starting the program at Georgia and has allowed Ketterly and her team to be
successful through his support of their work.

Between The Hedges
recently sat down with Ketterly to discuss the ins and outs of her work as
Georgia's nutritionist, and what results she has seen from the student-athletes after two years here.

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Between The Hedges:
What did the CPSDA award mean to you?

Jen Ketterly: It
was great to be recognized by our association, my peers and colleagues. It's a
testament to the people I've worked with and the places I've been. I'm a
believer that you're a sum of your parts, and this shows that I've been around
some great people and places in my career.

BTH: How did you
get into sports nutrition and how did you get to Georgia?

JK: I was a
student-athlete - I played basketball at Cornell University - and growing up at
some of the elite camps I attended they would have sessions for us on things
like GRE and SAT prep, but they'd also have information on nutrition, and how
hydrating and taking iron and eating certain foods could have a positive impact
on your performance. I remember thinking it was really cool that those things
could affect the way you played. When I was recruited to Cornell I was lucky
that they had a great nutrition program. At the time there was only one
full-time sports dietitian in the country, and that was Kris Clark at Penn
State. It was just coming onto the scene and it wasn't even a field of its own
at that time. It was just an idea. I thought it was something I would really
like to do and it seemed like a neat path. It's been great to see it develop to
where it is today, embraced by athletic programs everywhere. I got to Georgia
through stops at UConn and UNC.

BTH: How did the
start of the program here at Georgia come about?

JK: We didn't have
a nutrition program at all before our staff came on bard. We were one of the
few SEC schools who didn't. When Greg McGarity came on board in 2010, he
recognized that as one of the gaps in our services provided to
student-athletes. He came from Florida and worked with their training table
there, and when he came here he was able to identify that need. Ron Courson was
charged with running the search and also absorbing the nutrition program under
the sports medicine department. That's how it happened.

BTH: What are
your primary responsibilities?

JK: We wear a
bunch of different hats each and every day. A couple of key areas are, first,
the training table. We have a temporary space in Stegeman Coliseum that
services our football, basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, tennis, and some
baseball student-athletes - and we oversee that effort administratively and
programmatically. We work with food services on that, and at first we had to do
everything from planning the menu to running electrical lines for our hot bar
to ordering mass beverages for 200 people every day. Training table is a big
area for us. Second, we are tasked with servicing our programs - similarly to
how the athletic trainers and sports information staff have people assigned to
sports, we have that as well. So our staff members work directly with the teams
to meet with the student-athletes and make plans based on their needs. We work
on education - our goal as a staff is to change the culture of what nutrition
was in the athletic department. We want to be very performance-based and
positive. We work with the sports' directors of operations on planning meals
both and home and on the road, and on game days we manage what needs to happen
in terms of hydration and fueling so we can be the best-fueled team out there.
We work with supplement vendors to manage that product, and from a health and
safety standpoint we make sure that we are educating on the risk and benefits
of certain supplements, because of course we have to adhere to stringent UGA
and NCAA drug testing policies. Those are a few of our biggest jobs.

BTH: How have the
student-athletes received the nutrition education?

JK: That has been
one of the most pleasant surprises since being here. Our program is celebrating
its two-year anniversary this July, and since we've been here we've had great
support from the coaches. They've embraced what we're doing without a doubt.
The majority of the student-athletes have taken it all in stride and opened
themselves up on how they can get better. We take the angle not of "don't do
this and this" and letting them know that they don't have to give up everything
they like, but letting them know it's a learning process and teaching them how
they can best utilize foods and fluids to their advantage.

BTH: How has the
department grown since you arrived? Have you achieved the goals you set?

JK: Coming in, we
would laugh because we came into our offices and there was nothing here. Maria
[Breen] and I were hired on the same day and we came into these empty offices,
and we were like, "Okay, here we go." My goal was to begin to establish that
conversation about nutrition, about what it is and what it means. Our
philosophy is just as it says on our logo - "Prevent, Protect, Perform." Good nutrition programs can help prevent
injury. The protection element is about protecting eligibility through
knowledge of those banned substances. And the performance element is very clear
- science has taught us that good nutrition definitely can impact your
strength, speed, stamina, endurance, and power in a positive way. Those were
the elements we wanted to work with the teams on understanding. We also wanted
to build the infrastructure of making those elements support our teams and make
the concepts happen. I think we've done a great job of that.

BTH: What is the
goal of the nutrition department going forward?

JK: The big goal
we have is to create a training table facility for all our student-athletes
that we can grow into and where we can have team functions. We do a lot of
things surrounding food and meals, so we would like a space that is supportive
of all our messages we're promoting and have a great meal. From there, I think
we would like to have a better staff-to-team ratio. Right now we have about a
5-6-7 ratio, where each of our staff members works with five to seven teams and
we'd like to improve on that. It would be nice to give our teams more
individualized attention.

BTH: What else do
you want people to know about your program?

JK: We've been
able to accomplish a lot in a short time. It's truly a testament to Greg being
here and giving us the support we need, and identifying that this is additive
to our student-athletes and their success. He's passionate about taking care of
them on and off the field and this is an example of that commitment. We are
also lucky to have the wonderful sports medicine staff that we do, starting at
the top from Ron Courson as our leader. He gives us the creative space and
support to do what we do, and that's special.